Montaran

Montaran is an alphasyllabetic language, made up of base consonant letters and additional small vowel indicators. It is similar to an abugida in that vowels are denoted by marks similar to diacritics that are placed upon the consonants, but it is not a true abugida, as vowels are always explicitly written, and not mandatory for a character to have. Consonants can exist alone, but vowels must be attached to a consonant. Characters are arranged in blocks of up to three syllables at a time, the ordering of which indicates the emphasis placed on that word or word part. The component¹ that is alone, either at the beginning of the segment, therefore at the top of the block, or at the end and the bottom, is given syllabic emphasis. If there are less than three components in a block, emphasis is not clear by reading. In two-component blocks, components may be arranged side-by-side (linear) or on top of one another (stacked). This is definitive per word: for example, the word for grandmother, mada, is always written stacked, but the word for grandfather, jiko, is always written linear, though they are both only two syllables and two components. This rule can be broken for comedic effect or stylization, but it is gramatically incorrect.

Within characters, there is some variation on how components can be placed, not in terms of stacking or lineation, but in physical spacing. Because of the shape of some components, certain arrangements are more economical in writing to avoid either over-squashing blocks, or taking up too much space and creating a 'chunky' look to the character. These are often written in largely the same way for legibility and ease, but it is not strictly standardized grammatically or aesthetically, and so varies with handwriting.

Many proper nouns make use of the repetition of a segment or vowel, though this pattern is seen in other words as well. Proper nouns are considered to be place names, people's first names, time indicators (days, weeks, hours, years, etc), and some personified natural processes². Unlike other languages, people's last names are not considered proper nouns in Montaran.

Most words follow a consonant-vowel-consonant format, while most names are consonant-vowel. If this sounds like there is very little difference between these two it's because there is: but the central core of the language is in the segmentary repetition. Names' segments are defined c-v, and thus, when repetition plays its role, ends up with a rythmic word in which a consonant is always followed by a vowel. There are rarely consonant clusters in Montaran names.

In contrast, non-proper-noun words define segments in terms of c-v-c. Repetition still makes a rythmic sound, but it's less snappy as a result of the consonant clusters that form, and the repetition is less obvious in most words.

Montaran, then, sounds brittle and rythmic to outside ears.

Its makeup is mostly hard, fronting consonants (k, d, m, t, l, b, v) and long vowels (ay, ee, ai, oo). Notable exceptions are the soft consonants s and n, and the short vowels ah and oh, all of which are used commonly. Very short vowels (eh, ih, eu) are absent, as are very soft consonants (f, zh, w, h).

Names

Fauns' naming systems are unique in the sense that, as most children are born in twos, twins are named jointly. Any single child has their own name, as does their twin- but the names are chosen to fit into the single unit of the joint twin. Therefore, all fauns' names (assuming they are not single-born) fits in conjunction with their twins' to form one combined name. This joint name is used to refer to both twins as one person which, especially in early childhood, is not only convenient but accurate, as twins are understood to be each part of a whole, not such that they are incomplete individually, but that they are enmeshed within one another, like lichen.

Fauns' individual names are often short, then, just two or three syllables. The names, when tandemized, result in a longer, more complete-sounding name.

Gendering

Montaran is not a gendered language in the sense that words are gendered arbitrarily as a sort of categorization, but it is a gendered language in the sense that all words that refer to a person are gendered.

In English, for example, there are gender-nuetral words to describe people: teacher, twin, friend, cousin, person, you, me. In Montaran, all of those words have slight variations that dictate the gender of the person being spoken about. There is no ungendered 'friend' in Montaran, there are two similar but distinct words that refer to the friend in question as either a ram or a ewe. Personal pronouns (I, me, you) also have slight variations that depend on the gender of the speaker.

There are very few exceptions, but there are some.

• Circumstances in which the speaker does not know the gender of the subject. The word for 'who' in Montaran is ungendered, as if you don't know who you're speaking of, you cannot know their gender. There are, actually, also gendered versions of the word 'who,' which are primarily used in rhetorical questions of which 'who' you are speaking is, in fact, known.
• Speaking of groups. There are pronouns and terms used for speaking of groups of all one gender, but the most common and expected use of a plural pronoun is ungendered, with the assumption that the group being spoken of consists of multiple genders.
• Referring to children. Since children are considered ungendered until their horns differentiate, they use a seperate set of pronouns and terms that indicates not only their genderless status, but their young age. These terms are used for children only, as such they are not a true genderless pronoun, rather, they are terms that assign the gender of the individual as 'child.' It would be extremely uncouth for an adult to be referred to with these.
• Referring to wethers. Wethers use a third set of gendered pronouns in Montaran (often translated somewhat inaccurately to 'they'), but when using other gendered terms, are expected to use a combination of existing ones that imply the user is either a ram or a ewe. These terms do not have to all be consistent with each other, but they are expected to be consistent to the wether that uses them.

For example, a wether may wish to be referred to as: a brother, daughter, wife, and male friend. These do not appear, to an outside eye, to be consistent, but they are. This individual wether, however, will never be: a sister, son, or husband. The terms are consistent throughout their life, though the apparent gender of the terms may not 'match.'